> Long personal note ahead. > tl;dr version: Computers are such a large shift for human civilization > that generally we dont get what that shift is about or towards.
Another option: since *computers* are such a general device, there isn't just one notion. > In the long run I expect computing science to transcend its parent > disciplines, mathematics and logic, by effectively realizing a > significant part of Leibniz's Dream of providing symbolic calculation > as an alternative to human reasoning. (Please note the difference > between "mimicking" and "providing an alternative to": alternatives > are allowed to be better.) A thinking machine. +1. > Needless to say, this vision of what computing science is about is not > universally applauded. On the contrary, it has met widespread --and > sometimes even violent-- opposition from all sorts of directions. I > mention as examples > > (0) the mathematical guild, which would rather continue to believe > that the Dream of Leibniz is an unrealistic illusion Mathematics is not a closet guild, it is large and contentious. Ideas live and die in mathematics based on their fundamental truth. If there is some bold, sweeping statement it *MIGHT* be possible to prove or disprove, mathematicians will be all over it. just look at Fermat's last theorem and the Poincare conjecture if you want proof of this. > (1) the business community, which, having been sold to the idea that > computers would make life easier, is mentally unprepared to accept > that they only solve the easier problems at the price of creating much > harder one Most business people I know secretly love when they can sell a solution to one problem that creates new problems (and thus opportunities for new products!). The business term for this is an "Upsell" or "Value-add". > (2) the subculture of the compulsive programmer, whose ethics > prescribe that one silly idea and a month of frantic coding should > suffice to make him a life-long millionaire I love hacker culture, but it has been infected by the idea of entrepreneurship as a good in and of itself. Being a creator is a beautiful thing, go forth and make *art*. Improve the human condition. Make the world a better place. STFU about venture capital and stage 2 funding and minimum viable products; that sort of talk is a sure sign that you haven't created anything of actual value. > (3) computer engineering, which would rather continue to act as if it > is all only a matter of higher bit rates and more flops per second These guys are doing something that I find very uninteresting, but is absolutely necessary. Bravo I say. > (4) the military, who are now totally absorbed in the business of > using computers to mutate billion-dollar budgets into the illusion of > automatic safety Nations will always try and be imperialist. At least drones and robot soldiers mean less human suffering. > (5) all soft sciences for which computing now acts as some sort of > interdisciplinary haven Digital humanities (outside of a VERY small set of projects) is a joke. Multimedia history presentations (and what not) are the domain of edutainment companies, not academia. > (6) the educational business that feels that, if it has to teach > formal mathematics to CS students, it may as well close its schools. I feel quite the opposite actually. At the really top notch computer science schools, there is a clear mathematical bent (though it is interdisciplinary). Places like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, Cambridge, etc make a STRONG effort to separate the mathematical/theory of computation side and engineering side. At your average state college, the computer science department is just a hodgepodge, and you tend to see more graphics, "applied computation" and embedded/DSP type people. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list